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The Goal Behind the Riots Against the Tree Planting in the Negev: The Dissolution of the State

Bedouin Negev protest. RT youtube screenshot

Weak Jewish leadership in Israel riles illegal nomad-Arab Bedouin to riot violently. Israel must continue its tree planting program exactly as planned, because otherwise Israel will not be sovereign in the Negev or anywhere else.

Facebook post by Dr. Mordechai Kedar | 01.14.2022 | VP NEWSRAEL | Brought to print by Nurit Greenger

Bedouin in Israel Intifada

The emerging Bedouin intifada that is taking place in the Negev proves once again that violence and terrorism are not the result of marginalization, ignorance and poverty, but stems from a new hope that is emerging and increasing and violence is only a means to bring that hope to fruition.

This violent protest is not the result of planting trees by the Jewish National Fund. The JNF has been planting trees in the Negev for many years and this has never sparked such opposition from the Bedouin. The reason is simple: The Bedouin living in these unplanned settlements know very well that the land on which they live is NOT their property but the property of the state.

For years the Bedouins in the Negev have tried to get legal recognition of land ownership but have failed repeatedly in all their court cases, because the state lands in the Negev, except for the legally established towns, did not undergo an official division and registration of land and therefore no one can legally purchase, register or prove ownership.

What, then, is driving the Bedouin to the current intifada? The answer is ‘Hope.’

In the last two years, Israel’s political system has been in deep crisis and is projecting weakness because the Jewish majority in Israel cannot agree to sit together and form a coalition which will preserve the power of the Jewish majority in the land of Israel.

The split on the political right illustrates to Arabs in general and to the Bedouin in particular, the weakness of the main players in Israel’s political arena. Benjamin Netanyahu and Naftali Bennett, each in turn, tried to seek help from the local Islamic movement, a movement its ideology claims that Israel has no right to exist as a Jewish state.

For the past two years, many in the Arab sector in Israel have been living in hope that the conflicts between the Jews will continue to intensify and that the Jewish state will continue to deteriorate, lose its way, its power and its survivability. Thus, its weakening may – inshallah (Please Allah the God) – nullify the “Aggression of 1948” as they describe the establishment of the state of Israel.

bedouin protest tree planting in negev. TRT youtube screenshot
Bedouin protest tree planting in Negev. TRT youtube screenshot

These same Arabs do not express this hope in words but in deeds to name a few but there are more:

  1. The bloody jihad, riots and acts of arson that swept through Lod, Ramla, Acre, Jaffa and Jerusalem in May 2021, without police intervention and without the vast majority of rioters being prosecuted.
  2. Carrying out the Arabs’ demand from the police to confiscate weapons from Jews in the cities involved.
  3. Accumulation of huge quantities of weapons throughout the Arab sector.
  4. The demand for tens of billions in budgets that the RA’AM party, now part of the Bennett-Lapid-Gantz ruling coalition, received.
  5. Success in blocking the Citizenship Law in the Knesset that restricts the import of women from the Palestinian Authority (PA).

The “electricity law” enacted by the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, two weeks ago is perceived in the Bedouin sector not only as a law that would require the Israel Electricity Company to supply electricity to their houses built without a permit, but as a law that implicitly constitutes state recognition of two important things: one, the Bedouins’ right to build houses on territories which they have illegally taken over and two, is the recognition of the state of their ownership of the Negev state lands.

The Bedouins believe that by connecting their illegal houses to electricity, they gain the ownership status to the vast areas they have stolen from the state and now all they have to do is increase the rate of illegal construction on state lands so that every Bedouin child will own tens if not hundreds of acres. They hope that this will legalize their claim to this land.

And now, after the Bedouins’ hopes of ownership of every area in the Negev that they have taken over in the past and will take over in the future have materialized, the state dares to plant trees on “their lands” (!) Hence the Bedouin violence that we have seen in recent days.

The ability of their party, RA’AM, to influence government decisions and promote laws, contrary to the interest of the Jewish majority, such as the “Electricity Law” with all its ramifications, increases the Bedouin’s hope that the state will soon be forced to recognize their illegal status as legal, which will give them homeownership of all areas in the Negev which they have taken over and which they plan to continue taking over.

Bedouin Negev protest. RT youtube screenshot

Nipping the Bedouins’ ‘Hope’ in the Bud

What the state must do speedily is to nip this hope in the bud and the only way to eliminate it is by quick and decisive action by the state that will make it clear to the Bedouin who is boss here. The operation must include a number of components:

  1. Immediately restart planting trees in all areas planned for planting today and in the future.
  2. Destroy all the houses built on state land without a permit within a mile around any group of trees that will be planted.
  3. Administrative detention for all the Bedouin agitators and their cronies from the northern faction of the Islamic Movement, the Bnei Kfar Movement and any other organization involved in what is happening in the south of the State of Israel.

At the same time, the state must make it unequivocally clear to the Bedouin living in the vicinity of the city of Beer Sheba-Arad road that for every electricity pole that is taken down on this road will result in the demolition of ten illegal houses, and there is not a single legal house near the fallen post.

In this way, the state will ensure that those who guard the electrical poles will be those who live there illegally.

The state must regain its deterrence in order to eliminate the hope that fuels the uprising and if as a result, the RA’AM Party withdraws from the current coalition, the Likud, ultra-Orthodox and religious Zionist parties must enter the government immediately to save an unnecessary election campaign. Then if Meretz, Labor and the Ra’am parties leave the coalition, it won’t matter.

Only a broad and stable political right-wing coalition, one that ignores – at last – personal matters related to Netanyahu, Bennett, Lieberman and Saar, will be able to return ownership of the state and its land to the Jewish majority in Israel and return lawful governance to the Negev.

Clear Message to Bedouin Moving Forward

At the same time, the state must make it very clear to the Bedouin that:

  1. You cannot continue to live by two sets of rules, the Bedouins’ rules and the state’s rules.
  2. You cannot continue to build as you please on land which is not yours while violating the state’s Planning and Building Act.
  3. You cannot marry two, three and four wives while violating the state’s Prohibition of Polygamy Act.
  4. You cannot continue to live by smuggling, car theft and other crimes as well as protection money schemes and at the same time receive Social Security as law-abiding citizens.

If you want to enjoy the benefits of the country – education, health, social security – you must abandon the Bedouin lifestyle with all its criminal characteristics and adopt a modern lifestyle where you live solely on land you legally bought, marry only one wife and work in a respectful and honorable job.

The state will no longer tolerate the situation you have created in the Negev where you live in a system of norms practiced in the wilderness of the desert while the modern state finances your primitive way of life.

There is no such a thing. You have to decide. If you choose to live in the desert, in an uncivilized lifestyle, you can forget receiving social security benefits, while continuing living in tents because you will not be allowed to build anything more permanent than a tent.

Such a speech is contrary to the rules of political correctness. However, in a crisis situation the state has no choice but to be determined, clear and decisive.

It is time to resolve for once and for all the problem called “desert culture” that threatens the integrity and character of the State of Israel. A Bedouin uprising could lead the instigators of the struggle to ignite rioting in the north of the country and in the Arab triangle as well.

If Israel succumbs to the Bedouins’ demands, it will continue to raise their hopes of annihilation of the state.

Israel must continue the tree planting in the Negev, for otherwise Israel will not continue to exist in the Negev or anywhere else.

A Note From Nurit Greenger: What Israel Is Facing

The Jewish National Fund (JNF) planting treed in the barren desert soil of the Negev and the illegal nomad Bedouins, probably 250,000 in number, lost their cool. They claim it is their land and they went on violent protests. The Bedouin won; JNF halted planting trees to make the Negev green and Israel just lost 1/3 of its sovereign land to people who have no right to nor should be there.

In May 2021, while Israel was fighting another 4,000 rockets attacks from Gaza, major cities in Israel, where Arabs live in large numbers, like Jerusalem, Ramle, Lod, Haifa, Acre, Jaffa, were set ablaze and the Jews who live there, side-by-side with the Arabs, got caught in a total surprise. They did not know what was happening to their cities or why and were not equipped to answer the attacks.

Property was vandalized and burned, cars went aflame and some Jews were killed; the 5th Column Arab militants were displaying their power and we can expect more of that to come.

During the 2006 second Lebanon War, Nurit Greenger, referenced then as the “Accidental Reporter” felt compelled to become an activist. Being an ‘out-of-the-box thinker, Nurit is a passionately committed advocate for Jews, Israel, the United States, and the Free World in general. From Southern California, Nurit serves as a “one-woman Hasbarah army” for Israel who believes that if you stand for nothing, you will fall for anything.

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